Would you describe yourself as anti-capitalist?

God, I didn't realise how long that block of text was until i posted the thread... don't feel under any obligation to read it.

No, I'm pro-capitalism and think capitalism can sit side-by-side with progressive social change. I believe corporations should be tightly regulated to avoid injuring the American people, like a 100 times more stringently than they currently are. It's probably a pollyannaish view.

The problem with a negative definition (anti-capitalist) is that it does not imply a positive one. The problem with the negation of a negative (non-anti-capitalist) is that is does imply a positive (capitalist). I voted 'other'.

I strongly believe in the goals of social justice and social responsibility, but I am not strongly attached to any particular means of achieving them. A laissez-faire capitalist economy is a catastrophic economic framework for achieving social justice or enforcing social responsibility, but a modest amount of capitalism seems better able to harness human motives in the interest of creating wealth. Altruism is noble, but it takes you only so far; greed is more powerful, but allowing it full scope is playing with fire and eventually it will burn down everything in its path.

BTW this thread was meant to close on 12 September rather than 9 December but I put the month and the year the wrong way round.

I am pro capitalist, but I would qualify that by saying that capitalism must take into account a long term view. Anything that doesn't look beyond the end-of-this-quarter/end-of-this-financial-year is bad news. When capitalism includes a long term view, social justice and social responsibility become entirely aligned with capitalism. Example: providing free education for everyone. Investing in education takes longer than a quarter/year to pay off, but it's return-on-investment is so massive in comparison to how little is spent that education may as well be free.

Or the month and the day even.

capitalism is the social organization of death. the rest depends on how one feels about death on any given day.

snoball otm, and her/his point is valid with regard to environmental perspectives as well, as an economic concept of rationality is too short-term oriented to properly take ecological/environmental consequences into account.

NV, could you explain?

it's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven

in brief? not really. but the heart of capitalism is consumption. it's a burning through. that's why it doesn't make a lot of sense to think in terms of controlled consumption, because the motor of capitalism is still consumption.

now there might well be possible forms of social organization that are not centrally controlled but contain the possibility of sustainability. those forms of social organization won't be capitalism.

xp to snoball's post

Organizing free education for everyone requires a socialist framework, not a capitalist one. Setting aside the fact that no one capitalist entity could finance free education for everyone unless it were a pan-economic monopoly, no capitalist entity would attempt it without everyone signing a contract excluding them from using their education to benefit the competition. The idea that social benefits benefit everyone falls outside of capitalism.

aimless otm. i clicked "anti-capitalist" because i think there is a public interest that needs to be defended over and beyond the interests of private, competing factions.

That's good enough. I think I see what you're getting at, recognizing some of it from things I've read other places. It's an interesting view, and makes sense in a lot of ways. I still think (hope)it's possible to create some sort of middle position, however. The Scandinavian model comes to mind.

xxpost

voting "anti-capitalist" not because i'd seek to overturn it but would prefer to delimit and constrain its domains of influence. i'd like discussion of "values" to involve a multiplicity of things other than profit without presuming some other comprehensive standard bearer to take its place.

capitalism is maybe not the worst possible but i don't think we should settle for it

the northern european examples are pretty much a myth to keep revolutionary anti-capitalist feelings at bay at this point, they're all sliding towards neoliberalism

Organizing free education for everyone requires a socialist framework, not a capitalist one.

I wasn't clear in my earlier post. I meant free education in two senses. 1) school/college/university, organised by the government and paid for by taxes, most of which are collected from businesses, and 2) job related training for employees, mostly organised by businesses and paid for directly by them. The first sense has to be controlled by government, because it has to be implemented on a national level to ensure fair coverage across the entire country, and only a government can realistically do that. Education in the second sense is usually subject to an employee agreeing not to immediately quit and work for a rival company, but I think that a real capitalist wouldn't bother to try and enforce something like that, or any general non-compete agreement, because trying to make an employee do something under threat of overwhelming legal action is more like feudalism.

I would say ideally, yes, I am anti-capitalist (and essentially socialist), but realistically speaking, I know we'll never have the socialist uprising that Boots Riley of The Coup has seemed to think is coming for 20 years. and the US would probably fuck it up anyway.

so I'd rather spend my energy focusing on fixing the shitty capitalist system we do have.

hey, u never know

some policies i'm interested in & have been getting some play in left econ blogosphere like minimum basic income, full employment are kind of anti-capitalist ideas that could bloom within a capitalist system & potentially have some revolutionary implications, aside from immediate effects of helpin ppl out

oh yeah, I'm completely down with stuff like that, I mean....

This country just needs to get out of its collective mindset of "HAY Y SHULD I PAY FOR YOUR KIDS SCHOOLIN".

Businesses need to stop thinking of taxes as something to be avoided, and realise that paying tax gets them a bargain in return. It is a huge advantage to business to have an educated and healthy population, who are not shitting themselves with fear over the possibility of becoming destitute if they're made unemployed. Employers should be happy to pay tax, because what they get back in return, even though it never shows up as a line item on a balance sheet, is orders of magnitude greater.

Much of this assumes that we'll even survive the current era of oligarch-capitalism in any kind of recognizable state.

There are plenty of reactionary rich and almost-rich business owners out there who love the idea of employees shitting themselves in fear of unemployment. They see this as the natural order of things.

It is a huge advantage to business to have an educated and healthy population, who are not shitting themselves with fear over the possibility of becoming destitute if they're made unemployed

I think this is possibly not true at the very top of the business ladder, where their business only depends on other extremely wealthy people/businesses, and these are the ppl who have most/all of the policy pull. In fact it's better for them if the serfs never get too smart or too energetic.

xp

I think capitalism (along with colonialism) is at the heart of most of the injustice and inequality and wretchedness of this world. Any system that's existence depends on acquiring wealth will always prioritize wealth over everything else, when push comes to shove. The end result of capitalism, by definition, is profits over people.

That said, I participate in capitalism every day. My job is pretty much all about furthering capitalist enterprise at the expense of individual people's health and well being. So I'm also a terrible fucking hypocrite. Then again, thanks to the inherent nature of capitalism, I have more student loan debt that I will probably be able to pay off in my life so it's further the interest of capitalism to pay my loans or default and lose access to economic stability through punitive responses to loan non-payment. Capitalism! It's self-replicating!

Capitalism is basically the Borg.

The big problem with capitalism is that it only really works in a non-exploitative way if the participants aren't grabby & short sighted oh wait HELLO HUMAN RACE!

i don't think it has to do with the human race. corporations -- as depersonalized institutions committed to maximizing short term profits -- behave with less regard for others than most individuals would. those "externalities" as economists like to say -- environmental destruction, erosion of living standards for the mass of the population -- of corporations' behavior both in terms of their own activities and in terms of their political involvement hurt each individual person who works for the corporation, including the CEO and the chairman of the board, because they are all citizens who have an interest in living in a stable society. capitalism distorts their behavior by having them act on the behalf of institutional interests that may be no one's actual, individual interest.

I'm ultimately a people loving optimist, but I don't think the problem is human nature. The problem is a system that tells people that the pinnacle of success is GETTING WHAT IS YOURS and as much of it as possible, damn the consequences. If we lived under a system that valued altruism purely for its own sake, where seeing to other's needs, rather than hoarding wealth for yourself, was the fundamental driving principal, there wouldn't be so much grabby short-sightedness.

xp Corporations may be legal entities that can exist even after their founders have gone elsewhere (see Apple), but corporations are still run by people, and as such their behaviour is still explainable by the psychology of groups.
Arguably a short sighted CEO can use their position to accumulate wealth that they can then use to try and insulate themselves from the effects of living in a less-than-stable society. Whilst flipping off anyone who isn't in a similarly powerful position. But that's getting into areas of sociopathy/psychopathy/narcissism. It's hard to tell where capitalism ends and sociopathic behaviour begins, and the distinction is blurred even more because of the sheer number of sociopaths who use capitalism as an excuse for their behaviour.

ftr, having the government tax society-at-large to provide a benefit to all members of a society is socialism, plain and simple, not capitalism.

Here in the USA we get easily confused about such basic distinctions, because we approve of public education, social security and similar social programs and we are taught that socialism is ineffective and morally indefensible. In a word, it is bad. This creates a cognitive dissonance that blinds us to such simple facts and results in tea party types holding signs that say "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

I'm not sure the system needs to tell anyone anything other than 'if your commitment to decent wages and less exploitative sourcing means your product / service is 20% more expensive than comparable products and services you will probably go out of business'. It's difficult to see how a moral shift could reform capitalism, it can only be regulated from the top down. It's equally difficult to see how that regulation could happen though. The system has its own logic, some of the cogs are more handsomely rewarded than others but they're still subservient.

the distinction is blurred even more because of the sheer number of sociopaths who use capitalism as an excuse for their behaviour.

OR capitalism fundamentally rewards sociopathic behavior.

Sorry - I could pretty much respond to every comment attributing what I see as failings of capitalism to what others see as human failings, which after a point is just an asshole move so I will just register a standing objection and stop being all nitpickty about it.

Capitalism is our invention. It's weaknesses - that it can be bent to serve the less altruistic and even outright selfish among us - are a result of our human failings. Primarily our inability to see things in the long term, and also our tendency to react to the slightest threat to our medium term safety (real or perceived) with a sort of 'hoarding mentality'.

(and I suppose capitalism provides such an effective refuge for sociopaths because it's those same failings they try to exploit, whether or not they're the CEO of a company)

I am 100% against capitalism and 100% percent complicit in it

The (stock) markets are the key to facilitating sociopathy of corporations. The duty to maximise benefit for shareholders, the distancing of the individual from the responsibilities of the actions of a group, the reponsibility to avoid taxes where possible. Is it possible, if you're considering the entire planet, to be anything but anti-capitalism?

I've even thought of how it affected me recently. Like seeing all these friends who need $50 to pay a bill, knowing I have 6 months of monthly bills saved up (and make $2000 more than I need each month) and could just give it to them, but holding onto it for fear of a "rainy day" that will never come. Dealt with that feeling recently by loaning $300 to my family, but I get the feeling of "how much is ever enough"?

I'm thinking that society needs to be both socialist and capitalist. Socialism needs capitalism so that governments can raise enough money through taxes to fund social programmes. Capitalism's worst excesses need to be tempered by socialism. And I know that sounds like some 'third way'/'middle path'/'golden mean' BS, but any society based around a single ideology is going to get trapped in the flaws and weaknesses of that ideology.

(xp)

without capitalism, nobody would pay top dollar for your rare vintage vinyl

where is tickbox for suspicious of capitalism but not doing anything about it or well-read about (aware of?) any alternatives; still gleefully putting money into the machine and expecting to take it out again to buy more shit incessantly, so not meaningfully anti-capitalist either?

oh that would be other, right, or maybe just tick "anti-" and then feel guilty about inaction

(I was going to say something wanky abt capitalism hinging upon an impossible eternal economic growth as a necessary precondition, and how maintaining the illusion of growth will prove ever more deleterious and divisive, but then I thought maybe that is not true of capitalism per se, just any forms vaguely resembling the one which currently allows most Westerners to carry on with our everyday lives. that isn't all that comforting either)

where is tickbox for suspicious of capitalism but not doing anything about it or well-read about (aware of?) any alternatives; still gleefully putting money into the machine and expecting to take it out again to buy more shit incessantly, so not meaningfully anti-capitalist either?

This is pretty much where i'm at and i ticked anti, possibly you have more self respect/healthy sense of shame than i do.

I did some trot newspaper selling at university but I wouldn't like to argue that it did much to hasten the end of capitalism.

our sense of complicity and powerlessness in the face of capitalism is, of course, another of the great things it has going for it

I'm a "capitalist" by birth - my mom's family owned a company. Which leaves me feeling entitled to criticize some people's "capitalism". I feel strongly that some people shouldn't run workers' lives.

I guess I would describe myself as a socialist and an anti-capitalist in as much as I don't believe capitalism can be reformed to make it non-exploitative, but I don't really live my life any differently than I would if I believed the opposite, and also the only possible situation in which i would ever actually "describe myself as a socialist and an anti-capitalist" is talking on a message board to a bunch of people I've never met like I am now, so this seems too pompous a was to phrase it maybe?

there isn't really an effective way to fight capitalism as a system right now, so this is sort of an academic or semantic question. the only real thing you can do is fight to reform capitalism to make it less exploitative.

I still think of myself as fundamentally a libertarian socialist, but at the same time now co-own a small business; in some ways I think this is a valid ethical option if you can't escape the capitalist rat race or work in a public role (teacher, social worker, etc.).

mostly I just think a lot of the wealthy should be assassinated

i mean this thread question is really reductive and naive on many levels but at its core i think is a simple "do you believe this is the best of all possible worlds?" if you don't believe that then at some level you're anti-capitalism, in all its multifarious glory, because no amount of social engineering that doesn't take away the principle of profit as a sacred right will ever prevent the planet's wealth from being withheld from the many to the benefit of a very few, nor prevent finite resources being exploited to extinction, nor prevent humanity wasting its own resources and its own possibilities to the point of extinction

voting "sure" but context matters. revolution is a process: in places where feudalism essentially still exists -- thinking a lot of the middle east -- capitalism would be a positive step and therefore revolutionary

I've gradually gone from socialist to reluctant or agnostic capitalist over the years. I think it's important to remember that, in spite of what many people would have you believe, including many gung ho capitalists, there is no one way that capitalism must be practiced or one model that it must follow. There are many variations, many degrees it can be regulated or not, many hybrids of capitalist and non-capitalist ideas, etc.

I consider myself a capitalist but I think the US has gone way too far towards some kind of libertarian dystopia. I'd be happy to see stronger unions, more regulation of business, higher taxes for business, less regard for shareholder value, and stronger rights and protections for workers.

i think those things are imperative if we are going to have a decent society in the coming decades. it's depressing how out of reach these modest, reformist ideas seem at this point.

Loving this discussion, which I saved until tonight so I could read in full, though I expected a more heated debate for some reason. Count me along with Noodle Vague and carl agatha in thinking that capitalism is an irredeemable evil that is better obliterated than "reformed," though the latter is obviously far more practical and likely. Of course I participate it, and of course I wish I could not, but how is that even possible? Being selective about which companies you support (my bf and I go out of our way not to shop at Walmart when there is an alternative--key word, I suppose, being "when") is a nice gesture, but the realities about how these things are organized is probably far too complicated for an "I support (x), I don't support (xx)" personal policy to be as effective as we'd like to believe.

George Orwell, iirc, remarked in one of his essays that even though modern western liberals like to think that slave-based economies must inevitably crumble before the inextinguishable human desire for freedom and the superior productivity of democracy coupled with capitalism, that a simple examination of history shows that slave-based economies have a proved track record of lasting several consecutive millenniums, while capitalist and democratic systems don't seem to last well at all.

My own allied observation is that our own somewhat democratic capitalist system constantly struggles with powerful forces that would push us ever closer to fascism, autocracy and wage-slavery. This shit seems unavoidable and the need to fight against it all the fucking time is endless and a ridiculously uphill battle.

n.v. otm about capitalism being a death fixation it's like a compulsion to disconnect through needing. I think if we see a qualitatively different social organization become prominent we will have a major population reduction first. in the meantime while we are alive we are forced to participate but our imaginations are not.

Yes, I would describe myself as anti-capitalist. Aside from the rampant damage it does to communities and the environment, I hate its underlying nihilistic logic - nothing economically unproductive has positive meaning or worth; we as individuals have no identity in the system other than that defined by our position on a biaxial valuation of us as both consumer and human resource.

i admire capitalism for its kludgy attempt to make something semitolerable out of our worst qualities, which are very reliable, and like marx says it's The Most Productive Force In History, but quite apart from all the selfdestructive problems he identified it's now starting to seem like there is a cancer in production itself. the ussr with its industrial religion failed maybe even more miserably than we have on the environmental front and the chinese seem (pretty blamelessly for so recently industrialized a country) as uninterested in slowing down as anyone, so i think that whole wing of the_problem is more a species curse than anything. when we call the 1700s to the 2100s something like The Great Extraction i don't know that we'll blame capitalism specifically, although i wouldn't mind. NV is right tho that capitalism, unlike other systems, has zero hope of ever fixing this problem.

that stuff aside, i don't like the way that capitalist societies apply the language and the modes of thought and the ethics of the marketplace to the whole universe; this seems to get particularly bad in periods of great capitalist piety like this one (and most of the others). i suspect that certain nightmares usually attributed to supposedly universal human characteristics like racism, or assigned to the category of Colonialism with the implication that it's hermetic (and gone), were really made possible by the detached hunger of capitalism and only later excused through learned, almost guilty hatred: i don't think i understood the african slave trade until i saw the ads for the ships. and i agree that the system is unreformable in full, although when you start talking about unionized fdr-style mediated capitalism, where official systems of countervailing power help the adjustments of the class struggle(TM) happen without so much social disruption or violence (i see u over there of course tho pinkertons), i do get churchillian: it looks pretty good against its competition. but i wouldn't want to end there.

i guess finding a New Alternative that can get lots of people excited about fixing our mistakes and isn't just fascism again is the political holy grail at this point and i totally believe in it because the just-grow-up-and-settle hypnosis of 21c american capitalism is suffocating and creepy and glibly misdirects from shit that gets worse every day, but i don't have very many good ideas besides a vague build-new-communal-spaces-in-the-ruins enthusiasm. i do think we'll get something together eventually tho, at the other end of The Coming Crisis, even if jack london's Iron Heel comes down for a while. idk what to vote in here, which shows you how useful i'm being.

idk about useful but it was a good post

the others, not so much tbh (sorry guys)

stop buying stuff via amazon

― conrad, Monday, September 9, 2013 6:11 AM Bookmark Flag Post

No

― Jeff, Monday, September 9, 2013 6:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post

ok

― conrad, Monday, September 9, 2013 6:39 AM Bookmark Flag Post

jeff bezos

just what ILX needs, a critic.

<3 darragh

I put anti-capitalist because like NV and NickB I experience capitalism as nihilistic, and I have been both at the very poor end and some way up the tower; twice I have ascended the tower and found myself in a position to shower either bounty or crap on the people below me, and both times I've scrambled back down again because the moneyed world makes me physically ill and guilt is part of that, as is hatred of the way greed culture twists otherwise nice people into grabby bastards.

Right now I'm managing a pretty low level of hypocrisy although still running a bloody car, and surviving partly on the good will of my father, who lends me a room and pays the leccy bill. I am neither working for the Man nor claiming welfare; I'm writing, I'm consuming as little as possible (I haven't bought a new item of clothing in a year); effectively I have dropped out of capitalism as much as possible without becoming a mud-dwelling crusty. It feels pretty good.

I think the only way to ameliorate The Coming Crisis(TM) would be for everyone to take this stance and to take it a bit further, junk the automobiles, stop consumering, turn off the lights in Canary Wharf and all the shopping centres. There would still be a violent upheaval, but what's coming will be a fuck of a lot worse if we keep believing we can consume-and-innovate our way out of trouble.

I realise that I have not offered up any alternative form of social / economic organisation but essentially I think we're fucked, and we're going to be fucking each other over in the ruins too, because altruism depends on having sufficient resources to go around; it's not a natural human impulse in times of need.

Seems like you really need a hybrid system.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/fidel-cuban-model-doesnt-even-work-for-us-anymore/62602/

One of the problems for me is that so much that I take for granted in life is basically the result of capitalism -- the fact that I can walk into a supermarket and just rely on the fact that it will have ample, nutritious food for me to select (in spite of all the crap that's in there as well), the fact that ultrasophisticated, ultramodern techniques could be used to save my life if it's in danger, the fact that I can enjoy a wider range of culture and art than almost anyone in history, the fact that my "work" involves sitting in a comfortable chair in a climate controlled room and managing to sneak in plenty of ilx posting in between working, the fact that I don't really worry about getting life-threatening diseases and that the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of any child I have surviving past age 2. I realize that not all of these things are available equally to all people, but they clearly never have been, and I think they're probably available to a greater number of people than at almost any previous time in history.

And yes, I recognize that many qualitative, non-quantifiable things are loss in the process of those gains (in fact it's the nature of capitalism that we value quantifiable things over purely qualitative things, so it's inevitable that the latter get lost).

'mixed economy' is where it's at imho. pure socialism and pure, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism are both utopian fantasies. given a long enough timeline both will fail miserably. something akin to what goes on in Denmark, Sweden, etc makes the most sense to me.

how does capt kirk live on earth without capitalism? kirk had sweet apt. in SF and they don't even use money.

if we can solve this conundrum in star trek, then we can extrapolate that to work in real life just as today we have ipads and cell phones that rival many of the technology shown on the show.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/09/201399135045233452.html

sorry i just couldn't figure out where else to discuss that - i haven't seen a rolling norway thread around

Most mixed economies, including the scando countries, still assume unlimited growth, so that particular fallacy still needs to be addressed and fairly soon imo.

i don't know about unlimited growth in terms of GDP, but it's not inconceivable that we will eventually figure out nigh-unlimited clean energy.

that apartment might be starfleet-issued, but idk where he got all the antique pistols.

I think industrial capitalism has been a massive disaster for the species - engendering little more than the mass genocides of the 20th century and the collective suicide of global warming in the 21st - and as such I hate it and would prefer some/any alternative. but it ain't happening. so I have a job, etc. I dunno if that makes me an "anti-capitalist" but I feel like one.

it's not inconceivable that we will eventually figure out nigh-unlimited clean energy

lol

One of the oddest things about capitalism to me is its ability/tendency to eat the advantages it creates. E.g. fossil fuels enable us to travel further...so let's all live as far away from work as possible so it still takes us a long time to get there!

I went "anti-" because the kind you "pro-" people are talking about will never happen on this Earth (or at least in America) in the century or less we've got left.

i think the idea that you can't be anti-capitalist while holding a job, buying groceries, etc., is just one of capitalism's defense mechanisms and shouldn't be taken seriously

I'm not saying you can't be anti-capitalist and do those things, I'm just saying you have to be willing to do some alternative to those things.

like at least hypothetically

it's always talk talk talk blah blah blah about capitalism, how bout let's see some actual revolutions here people

Not anti capitalist, but I should couch that w/the understanding that I am a deep supporter of localized capitalism and very much not a supporter of entrenched mega-corps. That may come across as self-serving considering what I do, but I can't bake myself an awesome kolache like I get at the local bakery in the same way that the kid who bought a guitar from me today can't build it himself, and Walmart/best buy/guitar center will never stock it because it doesn't move units or w/e. I'm a fan of curated capitalism I guess more than anything - bridging the gap between small builders/manufacturers and people otherwise isolated from them. W/o some form of capitalism, that doesn't happen.

you probably still need fairly large, non-local corps to, e.g., make the steel that goes in the guitar strings or import the sugar that goes in the kolache

Yeah that's def true, and I think raw goods are another strike against anti-capitalism

but I feel you, nonetheless. I'm all for placing certain limits on how far we take the ultra-optimized, mass scale efficiency of every single thing.

i like coke and books and french fries

well isn't optimization and efficiency an argument against capitalism?

not sure I understand what you are saying

the trappings of capitalism being stereotypically wasteful, some alternate system of determining and meeting needs would do better.

great post from dlh, i wind up being basically supportive of capitalism for reasons along those lines.

if your concerns are environmental waste or human suffering, those polities that HAVE come under the control of explicitly anti-capitalist outfits have a record no better than capitalism's worst.

"some alternate system"

I was talking about a different kind of optimization and efficiency anyway, in response to JJJ -- i.e. all guitars being produced in the cheapest, most economically efficient, fastest way possible and sold in the same way vs being made by smaller producers and sold in smaller shops and possibly costing more as a result.

however starfleet is allocating condos, it's got to be better than craigslist

one thing i can't get out of my head though is that it's not really a requirement of capitalism to have a large, broad-based, growing, majoritarian, educated, healthy politically- and personally free middle class. those things are the creations of politics. capital will make money off that population as long as they exist, but as we can see, seems to want to try things out without it.

interesting enough brainstorm i ran across a while ago:

http://ashokarao.com/2013/05/08/radical-centrism-and-the-return-of-ricardo/

i don't end up calling myself anti-capitalist because my politics are anti-utopian. not to get erma bombeck on you but nobody promised it would make sense. having strong private property rights, bodiless finance AND popularly elected sovereign powers is kind of a fucked up mix, but, idk, so's anything. i'm skeptical of promises to bring in a new order.

It's hard to enjoy capitalism when I watch a show like Bar Rescue and see Jon Taffer advising bar owners to install "butt funnels" in an attempt to increase liquor sales.

(No, it's not a means for butt chugging, it's an actual crepey thing they apparently intentionally install in bars so that customers 'brush up' against each other.)

if ur conflicted by being anti-capitalist while doing well out of maintaining capitalism why don't u just donate regularly to revolutionary orgs, like al gore buying carbon offsets for his plane use

xp: oh come on, penny-ante hucksterism like that is the best thing about capitalism!

like, skimming billions off of people's desire to have stable shelter is kind of a bigger problem to me.

Did i read a respectable enough piece on them cracking fusion within the next couple dozen years lately?

idk, doomsdayers in 2013 make not much more sense than the 8th or 15th century ones to me.

Life p much continues awesome relative to joe average since the world began to organise labour, capital, technology etc more efficiently. Happy enough to enjoy wireless until the end, if it's coming that soon. Might get an ipad, tbh, shame not to enjoy peak luxury consumables if we've only got a brief time left to do so.

But really this q to ilx is the same as asking a class of five yr old if they'd consider themselves anti-bogeymanism or w/e

https://twitter.com/mdcounselling/status/368478313368416256

wrt the norwegian elections mordy mentioned, the red-green coalition had a huge drop in polls after it came out that the government mishandled the response to the july 22 attacks. they've slowly been gaining ground since then but it's not enough to change the tide, and the growth of smaller parties such as mdg (greens) and the red party show a dissatisfaction with the government on the left as well. however, it is distressing that the anti-immigrant progress party will now be part of the new government, since before this election all the right-leaning parties flat out refused to work with them.

to return to the thread's topic i wouldn't call the scandi governments as truly socialist, just state capitalism with a progressive welfare system. businesses are still controlled by their shareholders while the workers themselves have no say in the matter, which is not conducive to a socially equal society.

acc to BBC this morning most of the dissatisfaction was characterized as fatigue/boredom w/ the current party. that seems bizarre to me, as does the assertion that the ppl of norway are leaning towards the right bc a right winger attacked a labour-affiliated youth camp. i mentioned it here bc i wonder what discontent is brewing in scandinavian socialist paradise (the bbc interviewer called norway "nirvana"!).

there were uprisings in stockholm this year

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/the_stockholm_uprising_and_the_myth_of_swedish_social_democracy

I feel sort of the same about capitalism that I do about fossil fuels, in that I'd ultimately like to see them reigned in, but I also think that a lot of people reflexively oppose them while taking for granted all of the awesome things they make possible.

or alternatively take them for granted whilst reflexively ignoring all the awful things they make happen

it's definitely both

are you considered an anticapitalist if you just post shit online about how much capitalism sucks all day, or do you actually have to do anything different than the typical person? cos i know a lot of the former but none of the latter.

I mean I almost never hear anyone who "opposes" fossil fuels say "and let's live a radically scaled back lifestyle in which we eat a far narrower variety of foods, use far fewer consumer products, travel much less, live in smaller spaces with less climate control" etc. It's always "Solar will save us, because come on! The sun is free!" And it must be that the oil industry is hiding all that super-efficient solar technology that will replace all of fossil fuels in a secret vault.

the line i hear is that it's nuclear that will sustain us until the singularity or whatever it is.

I mean I almost never hear anyone who "opposes" fossil fuels say "and let's live a radically scaled back lifestyle in which we eat a far narrower variety of foods, use far fewer consumer products, travel much less, live in smaller spaces with less climate control" etc.

really. you never hear anyone here say those things.

I mean I get that iatee hasn't been around much lately but I don't think we're alone in arguing for those things

it's also hard to think of using money or even barter without some capitalist context coming into play. I guess filesharing is the closest to a post-capitalist/post-scarcity way of thinking?

lol and the infrastructure for filesharing is...

powered by what...

built and owned by who...

some racist group in sweden apparently

you cant use the tools of capitalism against corporations?

sure. but what does that have to do with capitalism

filesharing just shifts value from content providers to the owners of the means of filesharing, capitalism continues on unaffected

there's some marxist thing about capitalism providing the means to its own end but i think marx was referring to replicators and zero point energy

“Capitalism wouldn’t get out of the way. We couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t begin to exist. It filled all available space.”

http://www.avclub.com/articles/jonathan-lethem-dissident-gardens,102586/

yeah well marx was basically like

1) Capitalism
2) Revolution
3) ?
4) profit

http://inaquestionmark.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-internet.html?m=1
Lethem wrote a short story about a private Internet with "no money or animals"
ostensibly fiction but I think he's telling us he started a private BitTorrent tracker

I voted 'Other'.

(FYI, I didn't read what everyone else said and my knowledge of politics/economics/political science is very little.)

You're asking a few different, but related, questions.

I guess you can say, in practice, I prefer a mixed economy and fiscal conservatism.

I'm not necessarily against capitalism, and I think at its core, it can work. The big problem for me is that it assumes what will cause the most wealth is also what is good and where capital should be directed, which is why it says this process should be unimpeded, according to capitalism.

There is almost like two conversation/ideas parallel to each other that should be discussed when talking about capitalism: what creates (the most) wealth and why. As far as I understand it, capitalism lacks any moral/ethical concepts; it just provides a skeleton or structure for allowing the most wealth. Which is why I think the 'why' is counter-intuitive and even anti-capitalist. The 'why' leads to talking about things that are outside of capitalist theory, but which are fundamental in order to have an ethical system in place in practice.

http://www.ad-techlondon.co.uk/Expmedia/E168_crimson_logo.jpg

I've never driven a car or owned a home; my work is done

I brought it up tangentially, but banking and the payment of interest on capital seem to me to be at the very heart of capitalism, and as soon as you make the switch to a no-growth or shrinking economy the existance of interest (rents upon capital) switches the engine into reverse, and the force that has pulled us along to all this increase of wealth becomes a force for accelerated destruction. But because unlimited growth is impossible, this reversal seems, if not inevitable, then at least periodically inevitable.

This has long been referred to as "the business cycle", but if resource depletion or climate change start a retrenchment that cannot be overcome by technical advances, then capitalism is going to look like a worse and worse deal with the devil.

i'd say it's even more basic than that: money (or any store of "value") in any kind of form that can be accrued begets capitalism.
so the trick is how to allocate resources without resorting to money.

I'd say you are wrong about that.

well how would you go about stopping people from doing capitalistic things with money without also limiting or destroying the money-like properties of money?

Not to answer a question with a question, but how is anyone going to get what they actually need when they need it if all you have is barter?

i'd say barter is problematic, too, because if you can accumulate a thing like salt or something that people are willing to trade for lots of other things, you've got money again.

money is awesome, cash rules everything around me, remember

well the only option I can think of, then, is a centrally-planned, centrally controlled economy. Which so far have proven pretty poor and inefficient at allocating resources and labor, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done, especially with all the advances in data we've had.

Techno-communism might be awesome but it would be terrible for art and gadgetry

Not to answer a question with a question, but how is anyone going to get what they actually need when they need it if all you have is barter?

But like, the point of communism is that getting what you need when you need it doesn't rely on you having money or other goods. I don't know how getting rid of money would actually work, but it's nice to think about.

Replacing capitalism with a fully planned economy doesn't free the workers from their misery either. The importance of workers' self-determination is key to yer italian influenced autonomist marxism, as I understand it.

xp Right I was gonna say one thing you would probably not get as much of in such an economy is "innovation." Of course, capitalism has become expert in churning out way more innovations than it needs, many of them useless, and many of the good ones actually drowned out by the noise.

you can kind of see these things playing out in filesharing, where there's a lot of handwringing about how will there be incentive to create good new music if everyone steals it, and while there's informal barter on soulseek, and upload ratios with torrent sites, by and large, these don't operate the same way that normal money and normal barter does.

RIP next Pet Rock. ;_;

but it's nice to think about.

Whatever else is nice to think about, returning to some pipe-dream golden age of pre-currency is one I never consider.

Lol yes, phenomena present in music filesharing will show us the way forward

I mean if all I have to offer a plumber is teaching skills or all I have to offer a brain surgeon is my expertise at arborism and it so happens he lives in a condo with no trees, I'm essentially fucked.

anticapitalist is one of the few labels i'm comfortable affixing to myself.

there's a lot of handwringing about how will there be incentive to create good new music if everyone steals it

RIP next Pete Rock. ;_;

about how will there be incentive to create good new music

Have you seen how expensive shows are now, allowing for inflation, compared to thirty years ago?

did fugazi ever raise ticket prices the extra dollar like in that todd barry joke?

dischord is a capitalist entity

My problem with capitalism and communism is the antiquated ideological tribalism they bring with them. There are aspects of capitalism that are unmatched in their efficiency in allocating capital and providing consumers with goods they want and suppliers with the incentive to provide them. However, if I can't kill my neighbors on general principle for being dicks or avoid jury duty 'cause I'm not in the mood, the libertarian cant of capitalist apologies strikes me as sclerotic and ideological (not to mention hypocritical) and an abject failure in playing around until you find a present solution. Saying, "There's too much regulation," lacks the finesse of saying, "I think this regulation is counter-productive to our needs," and actually, you know, making a discrete case... Communism is notoriously conservative economically and inasmuch as capitalism turns into some ideology for idiots because "freedom™" who otherwise lack any circumspection of intellectual curiosity, it too becomes just a dumb script for people to follow and prove their loyalty.

or intellectual, not of

http://www.capital-brewery.com/

Right I was gonna say one thing you would probably not get as much of in such an economy is "innovation."

Human beings innovate like breathing, give them something to do and leave them alone and they'll improve it forever. Just because capitalism has wildly rewarded (some of) them doesn't mean that capitalism is a prerequisite for innovation.

For years the French have complained about French innovaters leaving the country 'cause they could find neither govmt support nor capital to help them develop products.

lovely speech andrew

It withers in the bright light of your facts, I'm sure.

funny how the pace of innovation just coincidentally sped up like a hundredfold with the advent of capitalism and the industrial revolution

All those technological advances coming out of North Korea lately, pretty impressive. The human will to innovate just can't be quelled.

innovation largely also sped up with the advent of filesharing

Not such a big fan of screamo metal speed klezmer, though.

xp -- innovation in what, and what do you mean by filesharing?

innovation sped up a hundredfold with all the resources available on vast tracts of land "acquired" from native americans

How does that explain England, Germany and France in the 19th century, though?

innovation in terms of new ideas and technologies developing and spreading rapidly.
by filesharing, i mean internet, print, ne'erdowells plotting in salons and coffeeshops, etc...

right but "internet" and "print" are not really separable from capitalism. You don't get mass internet infrastructure or mass distributed print without capitalism.

I mean you had mass print under communism, but that's partly because capitalism existed first and created the infrastructure for it.

eh even the Communist Manifesto celebrates the marvelous advances that have taken place because of capitalism, it's just slightly troublesome that the condition for this rapid innovation is intense structural oppression and an accelerated hurtle into oblivion.

The internet began as a public sector infrastructure project.

internet was a state-funded research project, the browser was an academic one, bittorrent was made by a dude playing around with no particular business plan. don't know too much about the advent of print but i gather it wasn't an elon musk type behind it.

i'd argue that the proprietary tendency to extract money from things actually in many ways inhibited the growth and proliferation of these things.

don't know too much about the advent of print but i gather it wasn't an elon musk type behind it.

The beginning of print was very much a capitalist affair; petty-bourgeois in its infancy and huge capital later on.

innovation sped up a hundredfold with all the resources available on vast tracts of land "acquired" from native americans

― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, September 10, 2013 5:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No doubt that stolen resources greatly boosted western power, but in order to actually make these "resources" worth anything, you have to have some kind of large organizational system, capitalist or otherwise, to exploit them. I mean, North American Native Americans had access to all these "resources" and were not "exploiting" them to "innovate" in the way that Europeans subsequently did -- I don't mean this as a value judgment on their organization or abilities or way of life, to be clear. Not arguing that they necessarily should have.

Actually, I'd argue that before their decimation in the early 17th century from European diseases, many native tribes were exploiting their resources as well as most peoples on the globe.

TBF, the internet is probably one of the best examples of something that has required both government and commercial forces to become what it is today. It's true that it's not the kind of thing private companies probably would have launched to begin with, but the government alone probably couldn't have created the kind of widespread, mass-used, multi-purpose internet that we have today.

Actually, I'd argue that before their decimation in the early 17th century from European diseases, many native tribes were exploiting their resources as well as most peoples on the globe.

― Ma mère est habile Mais ma bile est amère (Michael White), Tuesday, September 10, 2013 6:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe so. In any case, that's the pre-capitalist, pre-industrial world and my original point was about capitalism and the industrial revolution.

Again though, the choice is not either capitalism or state planning. Anticapitalists aren't all Trots and Stalinists.

Again though, the choice is not either capitalism or state planning. Anticapitalists aren't all Trots and Stalinists.

― oppet, Tuesday, September 10, 2013 6:14 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure, but again, modern industrialized life kind of requires large-scale organization of some kind. If not capitalist and not state-based, then what? Unless you just don't favor modern industrialized life, which is fine.

DERP

Modern industrial life is p cool I spose but it seems pretty obvious to me that it would carry on just fine without ~the bosses~.

Really

Very sincerely yes.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/07/whole-foods-ceo-capitalism-is-the-greatest-creation-humanity-has-done-for-social-cooperation/

Capitalism is the greatest creation humanity has done for social cooperation. It has lifted humanity out of the dirt. In statistics we discovered when we researching the book, about 200 years ago when capitalism was created, 85% of the people alive lived on $1 a day. Toady, that number is 16%. Still too high, but capitalism is wiping out poverty across the world. 200 years ago illiteracy rates were 90%. Today, they are down to about 14%. 200 years ago the average lifespan was 30. Today it is 68 across the world, 78 in the States, almost 82 in Japan. This is due to business. This is due to capitalism. And it doesn’t get credit for it. Most of the time, business is portrayed by its enemies as selfish and greedy and exploitative, yet it’s the greatest value creator in the world.

DERPADERP

no, internet was created by DARPA

the choice is not either capitalism or state planning

Imho, it IS the choice. You can regulate capital flows or the State can determine where it goes or it can be a free-for-all, but inasmuch as a govmt doesn't determine where all the capital goes, the rest of the economy in some sense is capitalist. If there are independent banks and indivduals who can borrow from them, at some level, it is capitalism.

monkeys display similar risk preferences and rationality to those of humans, suggesting that despite concerns raised by earlier reports, they can serve as a model for human behavior. standard experimental economic techniques have long allowed us to evaluate human risk attitudes, but we do not know how they relate to wealth levels, a critical variable in economic models. thirsty monkeys are more risk averse, which has has implications for the role of wealth in human decision making for some reason

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/04/1308718110.abstract

one thing i can't get out of my head though is that it's not really a requirement of capitalism to have a large, broad-based, growing, majoritarian, educated, healthy politically- and personally free middle class. those things are the creations of politics. capital will make money off that population as long as they exist, but as we can see, seems to want to try things out without it.

― goole, Monday, September 9, 2013 4:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

haha china

the cure for capitalism will be The Internet. some day we will only require a minimal workforce to grow our food, maintain our servers. we already spend 14 out of 16 hours every waking day in front of a computer. we could make it 16 and we would only need enough energy to power our monitors, boost our wifi. We Don't Need Unlimited Growth. WE Have Tumblr

^ this is what true communism looks like

you know what, the oil could run out, we could set off all the nukes, we could irradiate the sahara, and borneo, and the falkland islands. we could reduce the population of earth to a few hundred living in a bunker. and then they suffocate to death, or get leukemia. the question would be, Who Cares. the sun is going to consume the Earth in a billion years. too bad about your soundcloud

upload all human consciousness into the singularity hard drive, pack it into a safe container, last human body shoots it into the stars as earth is consumed by the void

secher nbiw obvs

bring on The Culture

Yes, that was the great mystery of the dune books. Leto dreamed up secher nbiw to guarantee the survival of humanity. But why. at What cost. for how long. six thousands years but even the big and slow and dumb brontosaurus owns an infinitely longer slice of the fossil record. raze thousands of planets so that humanity might not forget how to enjoy the Van Gogh painting that hangs in the MotheR superior's waiting room. Was it all worth it to hear a Beethoven prelude filtered through hundreds of your Other memories. why not break the Great Convention, each family at each other family with all the atomics. Leave the van gogh for the worms, not the humans.

right but "internet" and "print" are not really separable from capitalism. You don't get mass internet infrastructure or mass distributed print without capitalism.

― #fomo that's the motto (Hurting 2), Tuesday, September 10, 2013 5:58 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is backwards as heck. the advent of print was about the bible. the spread of print was about protestantism. that was tied to uprisings against the church, etc. but it certainly predates capitalism as a general economic system (and in fact, if anything, enables it).

also if we define the capitalist era as 1400-today, then its not surprising that you can class most innovation under it, purely because that encompasses a period of intense discovery as a whole, which, because those discoveries are the _most recent_, seem the most important (since building on everything before).

but even purely from a history of science standpoint there are lots of people in that period whose research was funded by either the church or by one or another person in the royalty. Tycho Brahe's observations, which made possible kepler's laws, where basically possible because King Frederick gave him an island and the funds to build a new observatory. Kepler himself was a mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II, etc. Meanwhile, even in the modern era, many of the scientific advances we consider most important have either come out of university research labs or have come out of government programs like NASA. Frankly, a huge push for innovation has been the need to fund more and better military technology. Meanwhile, over the 20th century, the Soviet Union produced an incredible outpouring of important mathematics (likely because such research didn't require significant funding), including, interestingly enough, a fair chunk of the basis of modern computer science. So while they couldn't economically get everything together to produce chips on the order of those in the US, they could go toe-to-toe vis a vis pure research.

One can argue that capitalist societies have had a fair amount of resources directed to innovation at various times, but this is hardly the same thing as arguing that capitalism actually directly produces the drive to innovate, which is just bad history. salk famously didn't try to patent the polio vaccine, etc.

I think that's otm. to my way of thinking its important not to conflate capitalism with modernity as a whole, even if there is significant overlap.

Yeah I may be overstating things. I think it's less that "research" depends on capitalism so much as the actual mass-production and distribution of the results of that research often benefit from it. Like we didn't necessarily "need" capitalism to create the automobile, but capitalism made the automobile accessible to ordinary people, or if you don't like that example b/c u hate cars, then say the electric light, or the personal computer.

Although there are certain kinds of research which certainly require, if not capitalism, then some sort of large-scale, top-down organization.

this is backwards as heck. the advent of print was about the bible. the spread of print was about protestantism. that was tied to uprisings against the church, etc. but it certainly predates capitalism as a general economic system (and in fact, if anything, enables it).

is it "backwards"? the standard line i thought was that among capital, print and protestantism it's impossible to pick the first mover.

how is 'capitalism' being defined here? there was already plenty of finance already, and enough science and engineering happening pre-1400 (the middle ages get a bad rap). didn't protestantism have its greatest appeal among those that were already engaged in early capitalism?

I guess tying that in to my last post, even if the Church spread print "first," the Church had no interest in the mass distribution of scientific texts, secular literature, etc. I'm not sure anyone else did either, other than people who could make money from it.

how is 'capitalism' being defined here? there was already plenty of finance already, and enough science and engineering happening pre-1400 (the middle ages get a bad rap). didn't protestantism have its greatest appeal among those that were already engaged in early capitalism?

― goole, Wednesday, September 11, 2013 10:32 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well this is the problem, how capitalism is being defined. like if you've teleologically declared that the existence of finance, science, and engineering = capitalism then you can find 'capitalism' in ancient greece and everything gets sort of hopeless. if you want to distinguish capitalism as such, involving the investment of capital as the dominant form of organization of the daily workings of society vis a vis things getting made and distributed, then you really don't have capitalism by any measure.

protestantism had its appeal in those who had gripes with the existing church for a huge range of reasons. those poised to do well in the spaces opened up tended to be merchants and small businessmen in particular, but not exclusively. protestantism also included radical communitarian sects like the taborites or in england the diggers and levelers.

hill's "the world turned upside down" is a v. good read here

is a v. good read full stop

Like any social construct, capitalism has good things to offer alongside the bad. But the basis of it, the profit motive, is essentially evil. Inflating the value of something encourages (and often is simply bold-faced) lying. Essentially capitalism poisons all social communication by encouraging dishonesty. Look at all of the stuff that went down in the past decade, all the big financial crimes. All of it has to do with deception.

Thing is, whatever is going to take the place of capitalism is going to require a paradigm shift. There will have to be fundamental widespread philosophical/religious/social changes. The problem lies in the Ego, in Xenophobic thought, in Reptilian territoriality, etc. I think the internet is affecting much of this change and things that are imperceptible to us at the moment will be seen in the future as the beginnings of a shining new golden era.

I guess tying that in to my last post, even if the Church spread print "first," the Church had no interest in the mass distribution of scientific texts, secular literature, etc

Church didn't fund Guttenberg printing his Bible, that was all privately financed

o right durr, actually the big "C" church had an active interest in preventing the spread of the print bible, correct?

most religious/philosophy/social change is bold-faced lying

the 'profit motive' or the human beahviours one might wish to negatively align with such an ethereal concept can't be chucked out with capitalism any more truthfully than one could claim that all human achievement is tied to capitalism.

I'm not really sure why "the profit motive" would equal "inflating the value" of something. Profit makes it worth doing otherwise thankless but necessary tasks. Sure, people might play in bands or make art without profit, but no one is going to start a silicon mining operation, or create office computer network systems, or transport large quantities of food from one place to another, without the possibility of profit. There's just no reason to organize such efforts if all you're going to get for your product or service is the cost of production.

if i buy guitars in bulk, put them in a place i have to rent and heat and light, allow people to see and then purchase them that would otherwise never be able to find out if they feel and sound the way they want, and then pay myself for the time i spend here, idk which part of that is lying so much

we need a thread for the entrepreneur and supernormal profit obv btw, but it would need to be not so airy as this thread also obv

like i hate entrepreneurs, but a guy running one shop like jjj here, he is not an entrepreneur, just to be clear

just to be clear i hate jjj but not because he either is or is not an entreprenuer just to be v clear

There's just no reason to organize such efforts if all you're going to get for your product or service is the cost of production.

Many people do things without recouping cost of production.

yeah but everybody can't, or...

wanting to get more out of the time & energy you put into something isn't evil

But just to make the scenario a little more capitalist, even the dude (let's say a complete stranger) who lends JJJ $10K to help start the guitar shop is being reasonable in expecting a little more than $10K back, no? I mean, he has no other motivation to loan the 10K, he risks never getting it back at all, and he might otherwise have something better to do with the 10K.

I hate being such a total capitalist apologist itt, but I feel like it's necessary to at least understand that there is some logic behind certain basic ideas of capitalism, even if those ideas sometimes wind up distorted in practice.

Btw the first personal computers-hardware and software-were engineered and designed by hobbyists in a non-profit-driven community. In fact the first time someone suggested making money off their work (Bill Gates's infamous letter to the Homebrew Computer Club) it was ridiculed by all present.

Adam, yeah, but guess what, if those personal computers had been left to the hobbyists, YOU WOULD NOT HAVE ONE.

maybe stop talking about computers, idk

they were... how shall i put this.. they were all poor peole, were they, these computer hobbyists in america?

Unless the Homebrew Computer Club had an idea of how to manufacture and distribute tens of millions of computers in their garages

first guy sticks a grass seed in the ground down by the river, just cos it was fun, you know, just a cool hobby, in the fall he can go get a few more grains, self-sustaining. but now there's all these priests and walls and tablets and people are out there working in rows and it's not any fun anymore! fucking bread man.

u mean fucking agriculture maynnnnnnee

bread's cool, it's just all the bullshit that comes with it these days maynnnne

This land is my land.

doing the decent thing and leaving the entrepreneurs to make social capital itt

gtfo when people want social capital they'll pay the market price for it

Entrepreneurs are cool! capitalism punishes entrepreneurialism though.

">_>"

is capitalism just 'interest' is that the q here or

bread admittedly is p bullshit now

idk man i know this guy, used to be a stockbroker but he dropped out and now he makes this amazing crusted pan at his studio u wouldn't believe

All communism needed was a computer algorithm to lock production of goods to demand for them. It would actually be MORE efficient then capitalism.

I think the idea that capitalism is "efficient" at "giving people what they want" is sort of half truth and half myth. Capitalism thrives on creating demand by finding and marketing things people didn't know they needed. A computer algorithm could certainly have made communism better at producing and distributing the right amount of basic goods like food, clothing, raw materials, heavy equipment needed in production, etc.

ah look, who knows what they want though?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/it-captures-your-mind/

full employment are kind of anti-capitalist ideas

Full employment is definitely anti-capitalist in that it benefits workers not owners but at sam time implies more production (and therefore consumption?)...or does it? - I guess not necessarily, depending what those jobs are?

To the question if capitalism=growth, then I'm against it, but unsure how to rectify w increasing population

Decreasing resources with rectify that right out for you, shame about the stuff that will leave with it.

Since when did giving people what they want be any measure of good though?

Production can be limited during full employment by shortening the working week. You'd have to ensure that increased leisure time didn't increase consumption enough to cancel it out tho. Just go play in a field or something.

you'd have to ensure that shootings by farmers didn't increase enough to cancel that out tho

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7015/lilwaynecommunist.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

we are forced to participate but our imaginations are not

why is "other" an option in the poll? isn't that a logical impossibility

other = "am pro-capitalism but don't want you to think of me as Gordon Gecko"

flopson's logical impossibility is correct, but it's not like it makes any difference

I think I was trying to preempt "it depends what you mean by 'describe yourself'" or "I reject the premise of the question" positions, but who whole question is badly formed and misconceived anyway.

capitalism is just watered feudalism imho

watered down, i mean

i mean, you'd kind of have to be a dumbshit or satan or super-lucky to "believe" in capitalism, right?

probably all three

'sell everything you own and give it to the poor or go to hell' is one of the foundational precepts of western civilization iirc. sure not everyone follows that but we'd have probably colonized at least the next star system already if more people did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1pVcLNgJEQ

'sell everything you own and give it to the poor or go to hell' is one of the foundational precepts of western civilization iirc

not even sure it's accepted as explicitly as this in the bible, camel eye needle accounting stress test is an aside but hardly foundational iirc- mostly the bible stresses how god rewards those leading good lives by ensuring they amass enormous material wealth ito cattle, women, slaves and all that other good shit

old testament, for sure. new testament, though, or the four gospels, at least, is pretty up front about condemning the rich and exalting the poor. share, children!

Jesus was a commie

Yeah but the rich can ignore the desperate appeals of the bible because they got all that good shit and who cares. yr huddled masses sharing inter alia and ngas about getting to the trough, thats pure gravy to yr rich who dont need the promise of yr dubious afterlife to get by, nor as a call to organise. Its a maslow step they never needed to hop.

It's better for Buffett, gates etc... to be philanthropic than not but I suspect concentrated giving is problematic too

i'm not anti-capitalist. capitalism is sort of like a hurricane. i'm not anti-hurricane, but i do think it's important to help the wounded & repair the damage

do u mean if you could prevent every future hurricane from happening you wouldn't?

i hate hurricanes way more than i hate capitalism

you build the hurricane gun, i'll test it out

Bond villain theory of contenderizer identity gains momentum

lol

rly tho, how can u not be anti-hurricane? are you also not anti-cancer? these seem like the easiest things to be anti-

im not antihurricane but is the best start to a sentence this year on ilx id say

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

missed an option for 'no, i would not describe myself as other' for the real contrarians

how did u vote deems

cant recall, one would imagine in the no camp, u would imagine im in ilx's top 57 capitalist supporters, wouldnt u

anyone that had to read joel bakan's 'the corporation' in order to pass a business ethics course would have done the same im sure

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/11/actually-global-income-inequality-seems-to-be-on-the-decline/

This sort of thing makes me slightly resentful of capitalism, yes:

Steep penalties taken in stride by JP Morgan Chase

House Financial Services Chairman to Seek Volcker Rule Change

Mordy's link = eh, basically some people in China got a lot richer over the last few decades

i think it's shocking that you would have a huge issue with that tbh

shocking!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/united-nations-reports-global-hunger-down-since-1990.html

Progress was most pronounced in East Asia, Southeast and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Socialist/communist states?

well

i'm not sure about that

there's a map u can toggle to see by country http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/ doesn't look like it splits socialist at all though

what even are the socialist countries anymore

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKslhF8UYAE0pEt.jpg

sonic otm

i liked capitalism before it got popular obv

earlier funnier capitalism

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Pamphlet_dutch_tulipomania_1637.jpg

A lot of abuses that people (not nec in this thread) blame on capitalism actually pre-date it. Industrial pollution, private property, government nepotism, reckless market speculators, data crime, etc. are all concepts at least a thousand years old in practice. An end to capitalism does not guarantee an end to corporate abuse.

corporations don't predate capitalism let's just ban corporations

Groups of people pooling their power together to take natural resources is an old concept.

yeah that's not what a corporation is

a corporation is a legal entity that absorbs risk and accrues benefits independently of its constituent members; it is inseparable from the legal concepts of profit and stock. The modern understanding of the corporation doesn't really exist prior to the end of the middle ages

capitalism has done a fine job of subsuming lots of things that precede it into its impenetrable whole, only fair that we can criticise capitalism on those grounds too

The holy roman church absorbed risk and accrued benefits independently of its constituent members. A good position in the church yielded annual dividends based on performance of the whole, whether through material income or favorable taxation rates. The church did and still does reduce risk by portraying its profit as charity.

What about mining operations? The first large-scale mining operations were more or less corporations in all but name. People coming together, amassing capitol, developing technology, gathering knowledge, extracting, processing, speculating on supply and demand, etc. The Iron Age didn't just occur naturally in the wild.

along with what merdeyeux says, I've always like Jameson's notion of capitalism as an unrepresentable totality--it's possible (maybe inevitable) to be for it and against it at the same time.

I think its a mistake to cast every collective endeavor as a corporation.

Yeah that would be a mistake. How about a collective endeavor formed with the purpose of not sharing with the wider public.

Not sharing what, is kind of the issue

Resources. Everything from the oil they drill out of the ground to the air they cough it into. Legal benefits including numerous recorded win setting precedence in favor of corporate powers. Tax loopholes -- these existed in the middle ages, tipping the taxman, people were just as crooked as they are today. Access to politics is a tremendous benefit perhaps at the root of all of this. Paying off the regulators.

These are all benefits that if an average individual tried to take advantage of it may end them up in jail. A corporation does not have to go to jail, ever. This is what I mean by not sharing, not sharing the same status in society.

If I make a product and go to a public area and try to sell it, I can get arrested. That right is wholly owned by a corporation in most instances. They are not sharing it with me.

You're kind of leaping around here.

Like all those things u just listed are totally unrelated to the pre-capitalist examples you cited.

(Well most of them)

Yeah I apologize if I am not making any sense. When do you say the start of capitalism was?

End of the middle ages

i consider myself anti-capitalist and i teach HS economics which in my state is a sloppy kiss on capitalism's thin, chapped lips.

I took AP macro in Texas and we spent a full month on a biography of Bill Gates intertwined with materials on the wonders of entrepreneurship. I did not take the AP test.

i havent taught AP yet, but somehow that doesnt shock me. i taught dual credit last year with a local community college professor as the professor of record (im more of a facilitator in those instances). the field is chock full of neoclassical assholes.